184 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
necessity always for the same set of words, or for the same cadence, 
lest the gravity and dignity of the historical style should be violated. 
But to any, even the least competent judge, it must be manifest that, 
though the annalist may be naked and defective in all the minor 
graces and elegances of phraseology, yet he may use plain words to 
express strong sensations, without descending to such expressions as 
“all fair above board,” “ the big-bellied* queen,” “ Henry the posti- 
lion of the Reformation,” &c. 
Neither are the Bishop’s narrative powers of the highest order. 
For an apt selection of details we shall often look in vain. There is 
a disposition to dwell upon circumstances with a painful minuteness, 
which shows the writer to have been as incapable of combining a vast 
group of actions, motives, and events—of fixing upon those features 
which are the most strikingly attractive—as of enriching his subject 
by political or historical disquisitions. In vain, also, do we look for 
those graphic descriptions which may be expected from the pen of 
him who, drawing his narrative from those contemporary documents 
which render the annals of nations picturesque and characteristic, 
can give to his scenes (if he be at all able to paint with a master’s 
hand) that close resemblance to reality which makes us, as it were, 
eye-witnesses of the transactions he records. We, therefore, miss 
in this performance that romantic attraction, if we may so call it, 
by which the reader is invited toa repeated perusal. In a History 
of the Reformation of the Church of England, it is also natural to 
expect that the progress, character, and effects, of the Reformation 
would be always kept in sight, that such a work would rather re- 
gard religious than secular affairs. 
Now, some will, doubtless, think that Burnett fairly stands 
charged with the reproach of contemplating that ever-memorable 
event more under the latter than the former aspect—that he has not 
sufficiently regarded human events in subserviency to Divine Provi- 
dence. It might, indeed, have been naturally expected from Bur- 
* Mr. Custance bestows a severe and, indeed, excessive censure on the 
second chapter of the History of the Reformation, when he assigns the follow- 
ing reason “ for writing that interesting portion of our history, that it con- 
tained so many exceptional passages as rendered it unfit for juvenile read- 
ing.”—Popular Survey of the Reformation, Lond. 1813, p. 14. No doubt Bur- 
nett has written some passages which would now be deemed coarse and inde- 
licate. But a more fair and less fastidious critic would have felt that allow- 
ance must be made for old writers. ‘The mode in which our historian speaks 
of Anne Boleyne’s pregnancy was not considered as low and vulgar in his 
time, however it might be so in the extreme in an author of the present day. 
